A "Tetralogia dos Amores Frustrados": amor e paixão no cinema de Oliveira

This article aims to underline the way Manoel de Oliveira deals with the issue of human love, not as a mere “theme” or “issue” in his work, but instead representing it as a concrete and dramatic reality, which sense and truth he wishes to capture faithfully. Through the four films that constitute his “Tetralogia dos Amores Frustrados” (including O Passado e o Presente, Benilde ou a Virgem Mãe, Amor de Perdição and Francisca, all of them based upon portuguese literary works), the director expresses the ultimate impossibility of communication between man and woman, as well as the intangibility of absolute love. In spite of the dramatic content of this specific vision, Oliveira’s movies are not negative or pessimistic works, neither do they assume a rather sentimental or melodramatic tone, since the director expresses a constant irony – a testimony of his capacity of smiling upon what is accessory, so that the essential is rendered more evident – as well as testifies, above all, the positive perception of the incommensurability of human wish as a way of referring to the infinite. By doing so, his work, characterized by an evident Portuguese taste, transcends the national frontiers and relates to universal art in so far as it can be seen as an expression of that which is more profoundly human.